What is the average lifespan of a laptop and how long does a laptop battery last?

These questions come up very often when someone is planning on buying a laptop or is switching from a PC. There are a certain number of factors that come into play when we are speaking about laptop lifespan, but most often what brings a laptop to its knees is its battery.

That is why we have decided to create a universal guide about how can you prolong the lifespan of your laptop, and how can you make sure that its battery will last for a long time.

How long should a laptop last before you have to replace it?

The average lifespan of a laptop is around 4-5 years depending on how well you take care of it. As we have mentioned before, the lifespan of a laptop depends on a lot of things. These are some of the main things that you will have to look out for:

The Hardware affects its lifespan

First, you will have to take into consideration, that hardware does get old and if you are using a 10-year-old laptop the chances of it malfunctioning or breaking is much higher than a brand new laptop. The most common reason why this hardware fails is that of overheating. Laptops gather dust and they are much harder to clean than regular computers, making them run hot if not cleaned regularly.

Hardware comes into play as well, when we are talking about what you are going to use your laptop for. Softwares and video games get better and better, thus they require more powerful hardware to run.

If you have a laptop that has a lot of RAM in it, a nice and powerful GPU and CPU, it will last longer, than an average laptop that is designed for office use. So as time goes by, the performance of your laptop decides how long the laptop is going to last.

The more you spend on a brand new laptop, the higher the performance it has, the longer its lifespan will be.

If you have an older laptop, look around for information on how you can upgrade it. Usually, the RAM and HDD of a laptop are upgradable, and + 4 GBs of ram and an SSD can help you out a lot.

Taking care of your laptop

If you don’t take care of your laptop, it won’t last long. If you don’t clean your laptop regularly, you will experience thermal throttling, which means that the performance of your laptop will be significantly worse when it heats up, and due to the constant heat, the parts inside will break.

But don’t worry, we have made a list which helps you taking care of your laptop:

Make sure you clean out the inside of your laptop regularly. If you are inexperienced, or not sure what you are doing just ask a professional or a friend who can clean it out and apply thermal paste to the CPU and GPU.

If your laptop runs hot, consider using a laptop cooling pad to make it operate properly.

Don’t leave your laptop on your charger 24/7. If you do so, you might potentially overcharge the battery which will shorten it’s lifespan.

Make sure you don’t eat or drink near your laptop to avoid accidental food/drink spills that might damage it.

Make sure you have an antivirus software and don’t download or click on any suspicious windows/pop-ups.

How long does a laptop battery last?

The question “how long should a laptop battery last” can be answered to ways:

On a single Charge

The single charge duration depends on two things.

How you use your laptop

The WH Rating of your laptops battery

The more quality laptop you buy, the more quality battery you get which means longer single charge duration. But you will have to be careful because many of the most expensive laptops come with bad batteries. We suggest reading our featured list of 17 inch laptops to see for yourself.

Usually, good laptops last around 5-7 hours until they need a recharge, but if you are constantly using a gaming laptop to its full potential, this can fall down to almost 45 minutes.

Overall lifetime of a battery

On average, if you don’t damage your battery, they should last for at least 300-500 full cycles. That means 300-500 full charges. Keep in mind that we have mentioned Full charges, that means you would have to completely deplete your battery and charge it to 100%, that would count as one.

One way you can prolong the lifetime of your laptop battery is to don’t overcharge it. Never let it completely deplete, but never let it fully charge either. That way you can preserve it, and get more performance out of it.

Thomas Tibco

My obsession in taking things apart and putting them back together started when i was a kid and i immediately fell in love with technology. I love reviewing stuff, plus I love getting free stuff from companies. Want to read before you buy? You are at the right place..